Jamshedpur, Jan. 2: An aeroplane journey, especially if it?s from the grounds of the Xavier Labour Relation Institute (XLRI), could brand you a smuggler, especially if you have a liking for herbal products.

Baffled? At the 26th marketing fair, MAXI, organised by XLRI, B-school students put up various games to gauge the attitudes and preferences of customers for herbal products.

One of the games included visitors boarding a ?Vishwa Pushpak? to visit different sections named after different places like Hawaii, Nepal and Las Vegas.

To add a fun element to it, ?customs authorities? would ask the ?passengers? questions to learn about their inclination to herbal products apparently to find out a smuggler, who is part of the game, with an inclination for herbal items.

Colgate-Palmolive designed the games. Similarly, there were five other stalls put up at the XLRI ground during the day-long marketing fair to analyse consumer behaviour. Games were used as surrogates to elicit unbiased responses from customers about various products.

Other participants included Bharat Petroleum Company Limited (BPCL), Tata Indicom, Reckitt Benkiser, Chola Mandalam Insurance Company and Givandan, a French company that participated for the first time.

There were stalls depicting movie and television studios, insurance and telecom companies, which tried to get customer feedback on various products and services offered by companies.

According to Ritesh Bhardwaj, secretary of Marketing Association of XLRI (MAXI), by using the attitudes and preferences which was noted during the fair, it will help the companies make necessary changes in their new products as well as in the existing ones.

A brainchild of professor, Sharad Sarin, head of marketing, XLRI, the marketing fair is today an accredited market research tool.